It's an example of the evolving infatuation with discussing, theorizing and speculating about active, closed and cold cases. Some simply take part in the conversation, relishing the mystery and intrigue, while others try to do their own digging.

But authorities say it can impede investigations, working against the very outcome members say they want. And when people engage in the real world, they sometimes can cause more problems, even if their intentions are good.

‘It kind of makes me feel like I’m out there’

Michelle Centanni started the Facebook group, “Where Is Amiah Robertson? Case Discussion,” on March 19, the same day a Silver Alert was issued for the baby.

Within about a week, the group had thousands of members. And they had wild speculation about what happened to Amiah and who was involved — including unconfirmed statements about Amiah’s whereabouts, screenshots of comments from people deemed suspicious or guilty — based on few details from police.

It was not the first such group Michelle Centanni had helped create. The Pennsylvania-based moderator and four other women have run more than two dozen groups, recently as part of the Red Shoe Crime District, a page for people who want to follow “true crime” cases in the U.S. The groups have sparked discussion around cases involving abductions, missing persons and murder.

Centanni, 42, met the other moderators in 2017, in a Facebook group about Mariah Woods, a 3-year-old girl who was reported missing in Jacksonville, North Carolina, and then later found dead in a creek.

In a phone interview with IndyStar, Centanni said she and the other women would share their ideas about where the case was going. They also bonded over their disapproval with the way the group was run, so they decided to start their own.

“The way it started out, we had one group,” she said. “We were following one specific case. But we had so many people that were in there that wanted to join other groups. And it kind of snowballed from there.”

“Our motto is: Unless it's been confirmed by a police report or the news, then it's rumor and you're not going to present it as fact.”

Michelle Centanni, moderator for the “Where Is Amiah Robertson? Case Discussion” group

The groups usually center on cases about missing people. If the person is found safe and authorities determine there was no misconduct, Centanni said, the group is archived, meaning it still exists, but people can no longer post in it.

“We would let the group discuss their feelings, let them get everything out,” she said. “(Then) at some point we would archive the group. If (the person is) found deceased, we would leave it open because we would follow the case through the legal system.”

Centanni says discussion is allowed and people are allowed to disagree — but certain speech and behavior has and will get members ousted. Theories and opinions that aren’t presented as such are removed.

“In our groups, we’ve already gotten rid of 500 members. What we really don’t allow is when people swear and get vulgar and make threats like, 'I am going to go find this person.' If a person says they’re going to go find these people, they are blocked.”

That was partly why Centanni and the others were unhappy in the Mariah Woods group. And it's why they try to target bad information in their own groups.

“We’ve been in groups before where misinformation is abundant. Our motto is: Unless it’s been confirmed by a police report or the news, then it’s rumor and you’re not going to present it as fact.”

There are varying degrees of punishment. A rant might get you sanctioned, but not completely banned.

“We’ll mute people so they can read the comments but can’t reply,” Centanni said. “It’s kind of a timeout so they can think about their behavior and come back with a better attitude. If your attitude is still bad, we’ll remove you. Most of the time, we’ll mute people for 24 hours. Sometimes we’ll mute people for several days.”

A stay-at-home mother of four, Centanni says she moderates the groups in her free time.

“It kind of makes me feel like I’m out there even though I’m not,” she said.

Why people care

As the internet became more user-friendly in the early aughts, some people began using it to do amateur investigative work, such as helping match missing persons with unidentified remains according to Deborah Halber, a journalist and author whose 2014 book, "The Skeleton Crew," delved into the work of these web-based investigators.

“Back then, it was dial-up connections, so it was really a labor of love,” Halber told IndyStar. “It wasn’t terribly easy.”

She found that the people she studied did it out of altruism.

"They really wanted to help a family that had a missing person who they never knew what’d become of them,” she said.

“It just kind of goes against our human nature to not know what happened.”

Deborah Halber, "The Skeleton Crew" author

They also wanted closure, Halber said.

“Human nature is to like a story that has a beginning, middle and an end. The problem with these cold cases is it (has) got a beginning and a middle and more of a middle. And it just kind of goes against our human nature to not know what happened.”

Halber draws a distinction between what the people she studied did and what she now sees on platforms like Facebook and Reddit.

“Because a lot of it is conjecture, a lot of it is speculation; it’s not really aimed at trying to help anybody,” she said.

That might have more to do with “people’s innate need to be part of a community,” said Amanda Vicary, a professor of psychology at Illinois Wesleyan University.

“We want to be around people who share the same interest as we do,” Vicary said. “And if you have an interest in crime or a specific case, these Facebook groups are a way to feel connected to others who have similar interests.”

Vicary, who studies social psychology and whose focuses include crime and the internet, found in her research that both men and women — women especially — were drawn more to crime stories that had elements of how to survive and prevent such an incident from happening to them.

“So it’s possible that some of that motivation would be driving these groups as well,” Vicary told IndyStar.

“If I live in the community, I want to know who this is," she said. "I want to know what happened there, potentially to protect myself from this individual or someone like him. And for a lot of people, this is kind of an unconscious drive. They don’t always know.”

“What is going on with all these missing women?” a user asked. Another said: “I need more updates. I know the public isn’t police priority. This case just really bothers me and scares me at the same time!”

After police announced in April that human remains believed to belong to Ferrell were found, speculation swirled around whether Ferrell was killed by a stranger or someone she knew.

Investigators are waiting on DNA tests in Ferrell's case.

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Brian Nugent, of the Avon Police Department, gave an update on the case of Avon mother Najah Ferrell, missing since mid March.
Robert Scheer, robert.scheer@indystar.com

“If you ask someone, they might say, ’Oh this seems interesting,’ but deep down, it may be this fear of crime and wanting to know what happened so that I can be protected,” Vicary said.

In interviews with IndyStar, residents said they're interested in the Amiah case because they want to help.

Rachael Chatlin has done more than post in Amiah Robertson Facebook groups. She, along with four of her friends and family members, searched several areas on the west side on March 25, just after police classified the case as a homicide investigation.

Chatlin, 25, told IndyStar that she did what she’d want others to do for her.

“As I look at my 3-month-old, I just think if I was in this situation, how I would hope the community would act and that's what I do,” she said on Facebook. “Being a mother, I felt I needed to all I could to help find her and bring her home,” she said.

Chatlin said her group looked through wooded areas, the neighborhood of the home where Amiah was reportedly last seen and anywhere that “had any significance with the case.” Parts of the search were livestreamed on Facebook.

For Chatlin, the searches were also about banding together as a community and advocating for a vulnerable child, not about feeding into gossip or rumors.

“I am proud to be in a community that comes together as one when it really counts and videos and discussions (are) one way we can all come together as a group,” she said. “What kind of community would we be if we just sat around and did nothing while this innocent 8-month-old is out here somewhere?”

A burden on police

“People were taking the photo and putting other people’s photo (with it), and saying, ‘This looks like the guy,’" Indiana State Police Sgt. Kim Riley told IndyStar. “We’ve told people that if they believe someone might be the killer, that you should send information to us. Because it’s not fair to that person, who might not have anything to do with the case.”

“It actually puts a hindrance on the case itself, just because we have to look at those leads and follow up on them.”

Maj. Harold Turner, Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department

Some people were putting photos next to the sketch because of personal grievances, Riley said.

“It was just somebody getting back at that person, like an ex-boyfriend or an ex-husband or ex-girlfriend. Or two guys that got into it and wanted to (hurt each other), and that doesn’t help us at all. It actually puts a hindrance on the case itself, just because we have to look at those leads and follow up on them.”

Police would get calls from business owners asking if the people being linked to the case on social media were actually being investigated. But because of the investigation, Riley said, authorities couldn’t answer.

“Business owners are on there and seeing ‘Joe Blow is a suspect in the murder case.’ But he’s not a suspect. A person saw someone on the street (and) took a picture.”

The case is still being dissected on Reddit, with dozens of threads speculating about the Monon High Bridge, near where the girls’ bodies were found, the path of the Delphi Historic Trails, which the bridge is part of, and the 2017 sketch.

Olivia McKenzie, who runs True Crime Society with seven other women, told IndyStar on Facebook that she and others started a Facebook group about the case right before the victims were found.

“The group grew at a crazy rate,” said McKenzie, who is based in Australia. “We literally had hundreds of people per minute joining in the peak time and we currently have over 22,000 members in that group.”

Riley estimated that police have received over 15,000 tips since the sketch was released, and more than 35,000 tips since the case was opened.

“I think everybody wants to see the case solved, especially law enforcement and the families," he said. “But I’ve never been wrapped up in a case like this before. And I’ve been (in law enforcement) for over 33 years.”

In April, investigators released another sketch of the killer, along with video and audio retrieved two years ago from Libby's phone. Over the span of about a day, police received hundreds of tips via email and phone.

The new theories are already piling up on Reddit.

The new composite drawing released by officials on Monday, April 22 of the person suspected in the Delphi Murders.(Photo: Composite by Indiana State police)

Irina Raicu told IndyStar she suspects people have tried to “play investigators” long before social media.

“But if they mistakenly identified someone, they couldn’t cause the kind of harm that they can do now. Bad actors have learned how to really misuse the medium,” said Raicu, director of the Internet Ethics Program at the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara University in California.

Are people helping?

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IMPD is seeking information from anyone who saw Amiah Robertson or Robert Lyons on March 9 in the area of Rockville Road and Mickley Avenue.
Matt Kryger, IndyStar

When authorities announced that Amiah was missing, Indianapolis detectives said she was last seen at a residence in the 200 block of South Holmes Avenue.

Kayla Beatty, who runs the “Where is Baby Amiah” group on Facebook, which has more than 6,000 members, told IndyStar she had seen Amiah before she was reported missing and is familiar with the area, so she wanted to look for her.

“It’s probably one of the (most) confusing cases I’ve ever heard of,” Beatty, 24, said. “There’s so (many) twists and turns. No one can understand how you can lose an 8-month-old baby. We’re tired of babies going missing.”

Beatty and her sister walked around the area, looked through windows of abandoned houses and into trash cans.

Beatty, who helped search for 6-week-old Delano Wilson when he disappeared in 2014 (the boy was never found), says she led a few search parties but stopped when she felt it was getting out of hand. She says she had been told of groups shining flashlights into occupied homes, digging through trash cans and crowdfunding for money for supplies on social media.

“I didn’t want to be a part of that,” Beatty said.

On March 28, the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department released a statement reminding people to “use caution when donations are solicited for activities surrounding investigations, such as for search parties.”

Despite some questionable activity, IMPD Maj. Harold Turner told IndyStar police “appreciate the eyes and ears” in the case. Amiah has not been found as of April 23.

“It’s actually encouraging to us to know that people care enough to go out there and want to find this 8-month-old child.”

Invest involving missing 8-month old Amiah Robertson, inaccurate reports & alleged “evidence” recovered have been seen on social media. Official accounts/facts as investigation proceeds will come from IMPD. Don’t spread rumors, spread the plea for help in finding her & the truth pic.twitter.com/c3rwewbQOd

But where it goes too far, Turner said, is when people start touching, picking up and moving items they might find along the way. If those items turn out to be evidence, actual harm can be done to the investigation.

“Every piece of evidence, every direction (at which) something is laying tells us a story. And any time you add someone else outside of that story, it changes the story and it changes the picture. And when you change the picture, then it doesn’t give us a true representation of just exactly how that piece of evidence landed or arrived at this particular spot. And that’s what’s important.”

Like the Delphi case, IMPD investigators often have to follow up on information they see on social media, even if they’re sure the information is a rumor or falsehood.

“A lot of it just simply is inaccurate,” Turner said. “And some of it’s just frankly downright lie(s). It wears on our resources. And it hinders the investigation. It does not help.”

Posting on social media without much thought is a lesson society has difficulty learning, Raicu said.

“Sometimes, in the cooler light of some distance, I suspect that people will look back at some of their own actions and regret them. Wanting very much to be helpful, but they shared wrong information. And so we’re learning, and then people look back and sort of understand the excesses. And we sort of seem to be repeating them.”